A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is an error-detecting code commonly used in digital networks and storage devices to detect accidental changes to raw data. Blocks of data entering these systems get a short check value attached, based on the remainder of a polynomial division of their contents. On retrieval the calculation is repeated, and corrective action can be taken against presumed data corruption if the check values do not match.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redundancy_check

So CRC is used when we want to ensure that the data being transmitted is error free. Now there are a number of methods to calculate the CRC and different types of CRC which ware listed out in the above mentioned CRC link of wikipedia.

Linux provides a simple command to find the CRC with out bothering about the mathematical details of the CRC calculation.

The command to calculate CRC of a text file is CRC32

The syntax is simple

Let us say we have a file called hello with the contents

Please note that as many times as you run the command, the CRC32 will remain the same as long as there is no change in the file. Note that even a space in the file change the CRC32. ]]>http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?feed=rss2&p=561270Bad Voltage Season 1 Episode 38: Easy Being Greenhttp://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/19/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-38-easy-being-green/
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/19/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-38-easy-being-green/#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 19:07:59 +0000http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/?p=1353]]>Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge and myself present Bad Voltage, in which we decide to talk about Linux almost completely for the whole show. Featuring following the dare in the last show a great deal of OpenSuSE (or openSUSE or opensuse or possibly Open SUSE), green-coloured things, and:

If you want a thing fixed in an open source project, and you’re prepared to pay market rate for a developer to get it fixed… how do you find someone to pay to fix it? It seems harder than you might think (1.49)

We speak as part of this openSUSE-based show to Andrew Wafaa, long-time contributor and member of the openSUSE community board, about why he’s involved and where openSUSE stands with the rest of the free software community (19.30)

In the last show Bryan threw down a challenge to the other three to spend time using openSUSE and report back on their findings. We tried Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment: now we talk about how that went and what we think about openSUSE as a whole (40.42)

As mentioned here, Bad Voltage is a project I’m proud to be a part of. From the Bad Voltage site: Every two weeks Bad Voltage delivers an amusing take on technology, Open Source, politics, music, and anything else we think is interesting, as well as interviews and reviews. Do note that Bad Voltage is in no way related to LinuxQuestions.org, and unlike LQ it will be decidedly NSFW. That said, head over to the Bad Voltage website, take a listen and let us know what you think.

–jeremy

]]>http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/19/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-38-easy-being-green/feed/0Requiem for a Hero: Part IIhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/ygGdnNfr33w/requiem-for-hero-part-ii.html
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/ygGdnNfr33w/requiem-for-hero-part-ii.html#commentsWed, 18 Mar 2015 23:08:00 +0000http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?guid=4ce918c47b6fc87d6b90c453f96df57eThe tax revenue from the now legal common street drug was, as decided by the voters, allotted to be used for the city's underfunded schools. This, of course, did not happen. The machinery that really ran the world hated schools. Schools teach people to vote in their own best interest. This is something that the machinery would never let happen. So the politicians found clever ways to divert the money to the recently upset criminals as a way to make up for having not prevented the voters from voting in their own best interest and so everyone, who mattered to the machinery, was happy.

Who wasn't happy where the future voters and current children at the local underfunded school. One of whom was the daughter of a recently deceased local hero that had been killed, unbeknownst to her, by a local crime boss. The daughter didn't even know her father was a hero. To her he was just another parent, preoccupied with the machinery that really ran the world and not very interested in the day to day dealings of his family's operation.

The daughter of the recently deceased local hero did well in her underfunded school. She always tried her hardest in everything she did. She was a good student, athlete, friend and daughter. She ate healthy, and in contrast to the other future voters and current children at the local underfunded school, she didn't drink sugary soda made from the chemically processed byproducts of inedible corn. She in every way lived up to the impeccable moral code of her recently deceased local hero father. She worried about the environment, and because of this she didn't use disposable water bottles. She had written a report for a class at her underfunded school that the plastic from the disposable water bottles would pollute the local waterways of the city and that as an alternative everyone, like her, should carry a reusable water bottle with them. She took her ecologically friendly water bottle with her every where and filled it during the short period of time between classes at the water fountains in her underfunded school.

Unfortunately for the daughter of the recently deceased local hero, and the city, it was too late for the local waterways. They had all ready been polluted by the toxic and unfortunate side effect of a local business. The CEO of the company responsible for the dumping of the toxic and unfortunate side effect had recently been arrested and convicted of violating EPA regulations by illegally dumping substance and thus polluting city's local waterways. The representatives for the machinery that really ran the world asked him nicely to step down as CEO, pay a fine and spend 3 months in a local minimum security prison. The minimum security prison was much nicer than the other prison in the city that was mostly filled with the users of a formerly illegal common street drug. Most of whom suffered from formerly treatable chemical imbalances in their brain that had, at one time, been easily treated with prescription medication.

Little did the daughter of the recently deceased local hero know that her body didn't seem able to deal with the toxic and unfortunate byproduct of a local business that had been dumped, illegally, into the local water ways and was now present in the drinking fountains of the underfunded school with which she filled the ecologically friendly water bottle she always had with her. Her young and athletic body was rapidly turning weak and frail like that of an old woman. She now possessed the kind of body that $5 worth of calories would make the difference between another week of living and escaping into the dark abyss of non-existence.

When the chief of police had told the daughter of the recently deceased local hero that her father was missing and presumed dead the daughter cried her toxic laden tears, fainted and crumpled out of her chair onto the floor. It was all too much for her frail body to take. The chief didn't even have time to give his well rehearsed speech about how they didn't have any solid leads in the case but that he would personally see to solving the matter and bring peace and justice to her and her family. Instead an ambulance took the daughter to a local hospital where she was placed on life support in a room next to a homeless man being treated for a variety of afflictions related to his homelessness.

The homeless man had an imbalance of brain chemicals that he self medicated with a now legal common street drug. While it was now legal to buy and use the common street drug it was not legal to use it in the street where the homeless man lived. So he had been arrested by the local police. He was being cleaned up and treated for his medical conditions, except of course the brain chemical imbalance, and would soon be transferred to a holding cell while he awaited conviction and sentencing to a local prison. He had no chance of going to the prison where the former CEO was serving his 3 month sentence for the illegally dumping of a toxic and unfortunate side effect of his former company's business.

The imbalanced chemicals in the homeless man's brain told him he would never make it in prison and that he would be better off in the dark abyss of non-existence. So when the nurse turned out the light and left him alone in his room to sleep he used a cord from the lamp in his hospital room to make his transition. So too did the girl in the the next room who was the daughter of the now deceased local hero and who's frail body could no longer stand the strains of the toxic and unfortunate substance it had running through it. She joined the homeless man and her hero father in the dark abyss of non-existence.

A journalist, in contrast to a politician, doesn't simply change allegiances. They simply try to make the best of a bad situation. They are the hapless victims of changing times and a dying industry. The machinery that really runs the world was working hard on solving another problem that had caused voters to vote in their own best interest, newspapers. The machinery had invent all sorts of new devices and systems to distract voters and keep them from voting in their own self interest or reading pesky newspapers. In spite of the machinery's efforts, journalists have become reasonably good at doing their job with the bad hand the machinery ensured they where dealt.

In this specific case and with this specific journalist, the best that could be made of the situation was printing the story that would make his career. It had been handed to him by a local hero who had disappeared without a trace or police lead. The journalist knew nothing of the hero. Just that a package that contained all the information he'd been trying to coax out of the machinery about a local crime boss and all the proof of the illegal activity.

The story the journalist produced with this information could not have been better written. The case against the local crime boss could not have been better presented. The story however was not the most important to the editor of the newspaper that day. The most important story was that of a beautiful and smart young girl who had died of an unknown condition right after hearing the news that her father was missing and presumed dead. The story of the crime boss was pushed further back into the newspaper where no one read it, except frail old women, heroes and villains.

After being released from minimum security prison the former CEO was hired as a consultant by a former crime boss who was in the process of turning his criminal operation into a legal enterprise specializing in the sale of a now legal and formerly common street drug. The former CEO helped the former crime boss turn the former criminal enterprise into a highly profitable and publicly traded company. A local stock broker made a prudent investment in the now legal company shortly after the company's initial public offering and made a sizeable fortune when he later sold the stock to other representatives of the machinery that really ran the world. The three men, all fine representatives of the machinery that really ran the world in their own right, met regularly at a local pub a few doors down from a successful local company, to discuss the now legal business of selling a formerly common street drug and to eat ham sandwiches. They really loved those ham sandwiches.]]>http://pipemanmusic.blogspot.com/feeds/7639693218993699500/comments/default0The New Yorker: The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirtyhttp://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/17/the-new-yorker-the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty/
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/17/the-new-yorker-the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty/#commentsTue, 17 Mar 2015 20:52:16 +0000http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/?p=1351]]>I think it’s indicative of how pervasive Open Source has become when a traditional non-technical mainstream publication such as The New Yorker writes an in-depth article about the GNU manifesto turning thirty. A well done, fair, factually accurate, and balanced article at that. You should read the article, but a few quick comments:

* While there’s been a lot of anti-GPL sentiment recently, whether you agree or disagree with the direction GPLv3 took, I think it’s important to remember that the technology and licensing landscapes would almost certainly look quite a bit different if it wasn’t for GNU and the GPL. Stallman was significantly ahead of his time in codifying much of this, so early on it changed perception and perspective, which is easy to forget now. Later on, the GPL served as an extreme left example which helped move where the center was for other more permissive Open Source licenses.

* I had forgotten Stallman was at the M.I.T.’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory thirty years ago. Apropos of a recent Bad Voltage discussion, I think it’s misunderstood just how difficult AI is and how long we’ve been at it.

* If you haven’t read the “ten-thousand-word document [sent] to prepare his hosts for his arrival” you should. That’s all I’ll say about that.

* It’s not just that “Stallman does not own a cell phone, nor does he use Facebook, Twitter, or many of the programs most of us take for granted. ” It’s how he does his computing, especially web and email.

* It is interesting to me how many staunch hardcore Free Software advocates are willing to completely forgo their ethos when it comes to mobile, despite it being such an important part of computing. It’s a testament to how nice some feel the Apple ecosystem is; but it’s also quite worrying IMHO. We’ve fought long and hard to get where we are. It would be a shame to have to start the battle all over again.

It’s easy to forget how important the fundamentals of Open Source are sometimes. Even after doing this for almost twenty years, I continue to think Open Source has the profound ability to change the world for the better. That makes it humbling, fascinating and inspiring all at the same time.

–jeremy

]]>http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/17/the-new-yorker-the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty/feed/0My first short story as an adult: An ode to Kurt Vonneguthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/vUGT7puP9wM/my-first-short-story-as-adult-ode-to.html
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/vUGT7puP9wM/my-first-short-story-as-adult-ode-to.html#commentsTue, 17 Mar 2015 00:13:00 +0000http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?guid=c4844eb98e3f98472ab784de60ebca5cRequiem for a Hero Part I:The satisfaction the hero felt in carrying out his personal brand of justice was scientifically comparable to the chemical reaction in the brain of an Olympic competitor winning a gold metal in their respective sport. He could, in many scientific circles, be described as an adrenaline junky. He was constantly chasing the natural rush of brain chemicals that came from delivering a quick and satisfying conclusion to the injustices of the world, no matter how minor.

He took great pride in himself and his impeccable morality. He did the right thing even if most people would think the ingression he was correcting was silly at best. One time he used his powers of deduction and reason to locate the owner of a $5 bill that he found windblown against a trash pile in an alley he happen to be in while surveilling an opportunity at getting those brain chemicals he so desperately needed. He had dreamed up a story while he searched for the owner of the cash. In his brain's narrative the person who lost the money was a little old lady on a fixed income who had out lived the rest of her family and the return of the cash would mean the difference between eating enough calories for her frail body to make another week and going hungry, risking escape into the dark abyss of non-existence. The hero imagined the old lady had been given the bill as change while filling a prescription at the local drug store and being too week to place it back into her billfold had opted to try and hold it feebly while still operating her walker and making her way slowly to the bus stop. He could see it clearly in his heroic minds eye that a burst of wind had torn the bill out of the old lady's age weakened hand and it landed neatly on the trash pile in the alley where he had found it.

The reality, as the hero soon found out, was that the owner of the bill was a stock broker who had given the bill to a homeless man holding a cardboard sign with a long and sad story about the various hardships that had befallen him written in black permanent marker. The stock broker hadn't read the sign, he'd simply dropped the bill on the top of the slouching man who had passed out from too much of his drug of choice, a common street drug sold to him by the low level employees of a local crime boss. The stock broker had given the money to the homeless man as a way of feeling slightly better about the large income he drew out of manipulating the worlds economy. He felt instantly better about himself and his place in the world and decided to treat himself to a beer and maybe a ham sandwich at a local pub as a reward for being so selfless. The stock broker had in fact played a small roll in the hardships listed on the homeless man's sign.

The homeless man had a minor mental disorder that was easily treated with prescription medication, but owing to a downsizing at his previous employer, he had been laid off, lost his health benefits and could not afford the medication his malfunctioning brain required. This event sent him into a spiral of self medicating with an addiction to a common street drug that worsened his brain's condition beyond the reach of modern medicine and led to his eventual homelessness. The cheap street drug released, temporarily, some chemicals in the homeless man's brain that made him forget that other brain chemicals where out of balance.The broker knew none of this because, as mentioned, he didn't read the sign the homeless man had propped against his unconscious body.

The downsizing at the homeless man's company had been triggered when the stock broker, seizing an opportunity at a large payday, had sold a very large portion of stock in the company based on a rumor he had heard from a colleague while peeing in an trough urinal at a baseball game. The colleague had told him that the companies earnings would be below market expectations. The large sell off of stock by the broker caused the machinery that actually operated the markets to view this trade as a trigger to sell more stock in the company and several other companies that did similar business. The drastic and sudden drop in the company's stock price triggered a panic in their upper management. The management thought they where doing a great job and in fact where in the process of preparing the annual earnings report that would inform the world that they had done such a great job at managing the company that it would, in spite of rumors to the contrary, be meeting market expectations. That didn't seem to matter to the stock market, and the CEO of the company in a very prudent and decisive move issued an order to downsize the corporate offices to ensure to the stock holders that management was making good use of their money and not wasting it on corporate excesses. None of the upper management where laid off, of course, and the company's stock quickly rebounded with the news of reduction in corporate overhead and solid earnings. They didn't rehire any of the employees that where laid off. They simply found a way to be just as profitable without them.

The bill the stock broker had dropped on the homeless man had simply blown away in one of the cities many and sporadic gusts caused by it's impossibly tall buildings. Neither of the last two owners of the bill had missed it's absence at all but the hero delivered it just the same, after all, it was the right thing to do.

The hero's next brain chemical fix, he hoped, would come from a taking down a local high level crime boss. This was the biggest and riskiest operation he'd ever taken on. It had taken him two years to gather the evidence and plan the villains take down. He could have finished the job six months earlier, but because of his impeccable morality he wanted to make absolute sure that the crime boss would end up, without a doubt, convicted by a jury of the his peers. His evidence was, at this moment, rock solid. There where indisputable pictures, audio recordings and video that was beyond the police's resources to acquire, but our hero, in his relentless determination and need for brain chemicals, had taken the time to prudently and legally amass an iron clad case the police would have in hand upon his single handed apprehension of the villain. He could see the accolades in his head now, the news stories, the adulation, maybe even a parade, and, of course, the sweet flood of endorphins and adrenaline he so desperately required.

The crime boss was an old hat at organized crime. He was handed the business by his father who had built it up from a local street gang in the decades previous. The crime boss had grown up in the crime business and was taught well by his successful criminal father in the day to day workings of such a complex and diversified crime organization. Much like the CEO of the homeless man's former employer, he didn't spend much time dwelling in the mundane day to day dealings of the criminals he employed. His job was to look at trends in the markets of the various criminal enterprises the crime family was involved in. He was very good at his job. There was no one better at crime than him. He would spend endless hours reading newspapers, looking for opportunities for his business in the headlines. He knew people at every company in town, including the homeless man's former employer, that gave him keen insight into how the city actually functioned. He knew every shipping container that could be exploited. How much inventory he could take off of it without making too many problems for himself. The exact amount of drugs and stolen goods he could place on the same ship as it headed towards it's outbound destination.

The crime boss had enough of the politicians and police force on his payroll to make his dealings all but invisible to the outside world. He even knew, in contrast to the CEO of the homeless man's former employer, how to deal with the unfortunate side effects of his criminal business. There was not a man in the city who's lifeless body could not be disposed of with shocking efficiency by employees of the crime boss. The CEO of the homeless man's former employer did not know how to deal with the unfortunate side effects of his business, the massive amounts of industrial waste that his company produced, so he simply ordered it dumped into the local waterways of the city. The crime boss not only knew of the CEO, he had extorted money from him to keep his secrets. The hero knew of the crime bosses connection with politics and law enforcement. He did not know of the CEO's existence or his illegal dumping of hazardous waste into the waterways thanks to the hush money paid to the crime boss by the CEO.

The CEO was completely unaware that he would soon be brought down by the EPA for these violations. The crime boss knew of the EPA's case against the CEO because he informed the police himself in order to keep pressure off his own criminal business. The crime boss was mostly unaware of the hero's plans to bring him to justice. He had heard some rumblings from his underlings of someone snooping around so he had hidden a gun in a pop up compartment in his desk as a precaution. The crime boss did not know about the hero. The hero did not know about the gun.

The hero had rehearsed the speech he would triumphantly deliver to the crime boss upon his apprehension. He knew every word and the exact emphasis he would deliver on each syllable. It would be the culmination of all his life's purpose. He would finally be on the map as true hero of the people. He revelled in the anticipation of his moment in the sun. He craved the release of chemicals that this event would release into his brain.

The indisputable evidence that was the fruit of the hero's two years of near obsessive work was all ready in the police stations mailbox as well as the mailbox of a local investigative reporter who also was working on writing the story that would make his career. The story of a crime family that ran the city . The reporter just lacked the evidence, that was now sitting in his mailbox thanks to the hero, to pull everything together.

The hero made his way undetected through the building where the crime boss ran his enterprise. He knew every security measure in the building, except for the gun in the crime boss's desk. He burst through the door of the crime boss's office and, having trapped his quarry and entered so elegantly undetected, began his well rehearsed speech. "Your time as a cancer on the underbelly of this city...." his voice was stopped abruptly by a bullet that burst out of the back of the his skull. The hero's brain had been distracted by the anticipation of the chemicals it so desperately desired that it did not react at all to the crime boss triggering of the hidden compartments release mechanism with his foot, his surprising speed at grabbing and discharging the gun and the accuracy of the his shot. The organ that the hero had hoped would release the chemicals he so desperately desired into his brain where now spread across the back wall of the crime bosses office. The hero made his escape into the dark abyss of non-existence.

The crime boss called over an intercom to his secretary and asked for her to get the employees who dealt with this sort of thing to come up and do their job. The crime boss had an important meeting with the chief of police in two hours and felt it a minor inconvenience to have to explain the mess. He also asked her to order him a ham sandwich from the local pub that was two doors down from the office. The crime boss really loved those sandwiches.]]>http://pipemanmusic.blogspot.com/feeds/46375038054474755/comments/default0Bad Voltage Season 1 Episode 37: Spooning with Everybodyhttp://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/06/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-37-spooning-with-everybody/
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/06/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-37-spooning-with-everybody/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 16:55:20 +0000http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/?p=1349]]>Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge and myself present Bad Voltage, in which we drone about drones, complain about governments, argue about old modem companies, and:

Why is OpenSUSE relevant, and why should we use it? Including a challenge to the three non-Bryan members of the team to try OpenSUSE for real (1.51)

We speak to Dave Nielsen, founder of Campsite.org, co-runner of CloudCamp, and not at all a money launderer (18.00)

Jono reviews the 3DRobotics Iris+ drone and explains what a drone is actually for (29.16)

Net Neutrality: the US have brought in some recent rulings which look bright for the pro-net-neutrality world. Are they all they’re cracked up to be? And what’s the deal here? (43.44)

As mentioned here, Bad Voltage is a project I’m proud to be a part of. From the Bad Voltage site: Every two weeks Bad Voltage delivers an amusing take on technology, Open Source, politics, music, and anything else we think is interesting, as well as interviews and reviews. Do note that Bad Voltage is in no way related to LinuxQuestions.org, and unlike LQ it will be decidedly NSFW. That said, head over to the Bad Voltage website, take a listen and let us know what you think.

–jeremy

]]>http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/03/06/bad-voltage-season-1-episode-37-spooning-with-everybody/feed/0How to create good OpenPGP keyshttp://seravo.fi/2015/how-to-create-good-openpgp-keys
http://seravo.fi/2015/how-to-create-good-openpgp-keys#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 14:38:50 +0000http://seravo.fi/?p=3089The OpenPGP standard and the most popular open source program that implements it, GnuPG, have been well tested and widely deployed over the last decades. At least for the time being they are considered to be cryptographically unbroken tools for encrypting and verifying messages and other data.

Due to the lack of easy-to-use tools and integrated user interfaces, large scale use of OpenPGP, in for example encrypting emails, hasn’t happened. There are however some new interesting efforts like Enigmail, MailPile, Mailvelope and End-to-end that might change the game. There are also new promising tools in the area of key management (establishing trust between parties) like Gnome Keysign and Keybase.io.

Despite the PGP’s failure to solve email encryption globally, OpenPGP has been very successful in other areas. For example it is the de-facto tool for signing digital data. If you download a software package online, and want to verify that the package you have on your computer is actually the same package as released by the original author (and not a tampered one), you can use the OpenPGP signature of the author to verify authenticity. Also, even though it is not easy enough for day-to-day usage, if a person wants to send a message to another person and they want to send it encrypted, using OpenPGP is still the only solution for doing it. Alternative messaging channels like Hangouts or Telegram are just not enough widely used, so email prevails – and for email OpenPGP is the best encryption tool.

How to install GnuPG?

Installing GnuPG is easy. Just use the software manager of your Linux distro to install it, or download the installation package for Mac OS X via gnupg.org.

There are two generations of GnuPG, the 2.x series and the 1.4.x series. For compatibility reasons it is still advisable to use the 1.4.x versions.

How to create keys?

Without you own key you can only send encrypted data or verify the signature of other users. In order to be able to receive encrypted data or to sign some data yourself, you need to create a key pair for yourself. The key pair consists for two keys:

a secret key you shall protect and which is the only key that can be used to decrypt data sent to you or to make signatures

a public key which you publish and which others use to encrypt data for you or use to verify your signatures

Before you generate your keys, you need to edit your gpg configuration file to make sure the strongest algorithms are used instead of the default options in GnuPG. If you are using a very recent version of GnuPG it might already have better defaults.

For brevity, we only provide the command line instructions here. Edit the config file by running for example nano ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf and adding the algorithm settings:

If the file does not exist, just run gpg and press Ctrl-C to cancel. This will create the configuration directory and file automatically.

Once done with that preperation, actually generate the key by running gpg --gen-key

For key type select “(1) RSA and RSA (default)“. RSA is the preferred algorithm nowadays and this option also automatically creates a subkey for encryption, something that might be useful later but which you don’t immediately need to learn about.

As the key size enter “4096” as 2048 bit keys are not considered strong enough anymore.

A good value for expiration is 3 years, so enter “3y” when asked for how long the key should be valid. Don’t worry – you don’t have to create a new key again. You can some day update your key expiry date, even after it expired. Having keys that never expires is bad practice. Old never-expiring keys might come back haunting you some day.

For the name and email choose your real name and real email. OpenPGP is not an anonymity tool, but a tool to encrypt to and verify signatures of other users. Other people will be evaluating if a key is really yours, so having a false name would be confusing.

When GnuPG asks for a comment, don’t enter anything. Comments are unnecessary and sometimes simply confusing, so avoid making one.

The last step is to define a passphrase. Follow the guidelines of our password best practices article and choose a complex yet easy to remember password, and make sure you never forget it.

At this stage you are done and can start using your new key. For different usages of OpenPGP you need to consult other documentation or install software that makes it easy. All software that use OpenPGP will automatically detect your ~/.gnupg directory in your home folder and use the keys from there.

Store securely

Make sure you home directory is encrypted, or maybe even your whole hard drive. On Linux it is easy with eCryptfs or LUKS/dm-crypt. If your hard drive is stolen or your keys leak in some other way, the thief can decrypt all your data and impersonate you by signing things digitally with your key.

Also if you don’t make regular backups of your home directory, you really should start doing it now so that you don’t lose your key or any other data either.

Additional identities (emails)

If you want to add more email addresses in the key gpg --edit-key 12345678 and in the prompt enter command adduid, which will start the dialog for adding another name and email on your key.

More guides

Encryption, and in particular secure unbreakable encryption is really hard. Good tools can hide away the complexity, but unfortunately modern tools and operating systems don’t have these features fully integrated yet. Users need to learn some of the technical stuff to be able to use different tools themselves.

Because OpenPGP is difficult to use, the net is full of lots of different guides. Unfortunately most of them are outdated or have errors. Here are a few guides we can recommend for futher reading:

]]>http://seravo.fi/2015/how-to-create-good-openpgp-keys/feed0HowTo: Install MySQL Workbench on RHEL 5.x / CentOS 5.x | x86_64http://www.tejasbarot.com/2015/03/06/howto-install-mysql-workbench-on-rhel-5-x-centos-5-x-x86_64/
http://www.tejasbarot.com/2015/03/06/howto-install-mysql-workbench-on-rhel-5-x-centos-5-x-x86_64/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 06:17:08 +0000http://www.tejasbarot.com/?p=3195http://www.tejasbarot.com/2015/03/06/howto-install-mysql-workbench-on-rhel-5-x-centos-5-x-x86_64/feed/0colrm to remove columns from a text filehttp://tuxthink.blogspot.com/2015/03/colrm-to-remove-columns-from-text-file.html
http://tuxthink.blogspot.com/2015/03/colrm-to-remove-columns-from-text-file.html#commentsThu, 05 Mar 2015 18:36:00 +0000http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?guid=23f5687951e767440f2c7a6f67dd6a4bOrganizing data is columns is a very common occurrence and need for manipulation these columns is needed often. colrm is a command that helps us remove a set of columns easily from a text file.

colrm takes two optional arguments

start: The first column that has to be removed stop: The last column that has to be removed. The command treats every character in a row as a column. If we specify only the start column, the characters starting from 'start' column number till the end. For example if we have the following file data:

The file has data in three columns. One set of numbers, one set of blank characters and one set of alphabets. To remove the alphabets, which is the third and last column we need to specify only the column number from which to begin as the alphabets are the last column.

If we want to remove the column from between, like the column of numbers which is the first column we can pass the starting and ending column numbers as shown below.

We can see that only the first and second columns are removed and the other columns are displayed. ]]>http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?feed=rss2&p=560760It’s got a big mouth, just like me.http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/tX3K0auqPkI/its-got-big-mouth-just-like-me.html
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pipemanmusic/~3/tX3K0auqPkI/its-got-big-mouth-just-like-me.html#commentsThu, 05 Mar 2015 02:05:00 +0000http://www.linuxplanet.org/blogs/?guid=b6863341c34deb451ee7c77dc6abeaeaFor years I was in love with Nalgene brand wide mouth, and even narrow mouth water bottles but then the BPA débâcle happened and I gave them up. I switched, much to my dismay, to stainless steel but I missed my Nalgene bottles more than is healthy for an adult male.

When they came out with the BPA free versions I switched back and I have to say, it's one of my favourite accessories. For those of you that know me, you also know that I'm very rarely without my Nalgene in tow.

So why do I love my Nalgene so much?

First, they are cheap and available pretty much anywhere for under $10 and it comes in many different colors. I very rarely lose my water bottle, but when I do I can replace it with a visit to just about any store anywhere.

It's virtually indestructible. I've dropped them thousands of times and they hold up to my years of abuse.

The wide mouth means I can load it up with ice easily and I like a lot of ice in my water.

It's made of Lexan and that means it can handle temperatures up to the boiling point of water. I first heard about this on the hammockforums.net website where people where talking about using them as hot water bottles on chilly nights to squeeze a few more degrees of comfort out of their sleeping systems, since then I've used them quite regularly as a hot water bottle to help sooth my chronic shoulder pain. I even sewed my own cover filled with rice to insulate myself from the high temps and make the heat last longer. It's really amazing at putting the right amount of heat right where I need it. I also have a crazy story, that I won't share right, now about saving a couple friends life on the side of a mountain by making hot water bottles in cold temps.

I really do view my Nalgene bottle as one of the few things I really can't do without.]]>For years I was in love with Nalgene brand wide mouth, and even narrow mouth water bottles but then the BPA débâcle happened and I gave them up. I switched, much to my dismay, to stainless steel but I missed my Nalgene bottles more than is healthy for an adult male.

When they came out with the BPA free versions I switched back and I have to say, it's one of my favourite accessories. For those of you that know me, you also know that I'm very rarely without my Nalgene in tow.

So why do I love my Nalgene so much?

First, they are cheap and available pretty much anywhere for under $10 and it comes in many different colors. I very rarely lose my water bottle, but when I do I can replace it with a visit to just about any store anywhere.

It's virtually indestructible. I've dropped them thousands of times and they hold up to my years of abuse.

The wide mouth means I can load it up with ice easily and I like a lot of ice in my water.

It's made of Lexan and that means it can handle temperatures up to the boiling point of water. I first heard about this on the hammockforums.net website where people where talking about using them as hot water bottles on chilly nights to squeeze a few more degrees of comfort out of their sleeping systems, since then I've used them quite regularly as a hot water bottle to help sooth my chronic shoulder pain. I even sewed my own cover filled with rice to insulate myself from the high temps and make the heat last longer. It's really amazing at putting the right amount of heat right where I need it. I also have a crazy story, that I won't share right, now about saving a couple friends life on the side of a mountain by making hot water bottles in cold temps.

I really do view my Nalgene bottle as one of the few things I really can't do without.]]>http://pipemanmusic.blogspot.com/feeds/7619739133180037223/comments/default0